User Research / UCD

Three-month bespoke project

User Research

User-Centred Design

Moss Bros

Moss Bros. were looking to develop a fresh and modern online experience that connected with the look and feel of their brick-and-mortar stores. As part of an intense three-month period, we provided them with the customer-driven foundations for the responsive redesign of their website. Research is the most important element of any UCD project; taking a shortcut on this phase means the whole project might fall down.

Initial discovery

Before we got stuck into the main research phase, we needed to understand any existing data and insight that Moss Bros. had available to them – the more information we can to digest, the more informed we are going into the main user research. As part of this phase, we also conducted our heuristic evaluation and an analysis of the client’s Google Analytics data. All this insight combined allowed us to start to build a picture of how users were currently using the website, and the pros and cons of the Moss Bros. online experience.

User Research: the set-up

Understanding the typical customers who shopped on the Moss Bros. website, and their associated demographics, was key to recruiting research participants successfully. For example, although this is a male-centric business, we discovered that women were often using the website to buy clothes for their sons or husbands – so we made sure to include them within the research.

User Research: prepping

With any user research project, it is key to ensure we work with the client to get the most value out of the 1-1 moderated sessions. This involves being clear on the objectives of the research, but also on the scenarios we will be taking the participants through. To create relevant scenarios for the sessions, we worked collaboratively with the Moss Bros. team and combined this information with existing data we had reviewed as part of the initial discovery.

User Research: the outcome

Moss Bros. knew the importance of ensuring customers were at the heart of their new website redesign. Our thorough research phase laid these foundations, which in turn allowed us to deliver to Moss Bros. & Remarkable (their chosen dev agency) the design and usability principles that went on to form the redesigned experience.

After four months of being implemented, the redesign has produced a 36% increase in mobile conversion rate and a 25% increase in desktop conversion rate.

Matt Henton

“We decided to work with PRWD at the very start of our redesign programme because we wanted to get as clear an understanding as possible of the motivations and requirements of our site visitors and customers. Before we committed to any decisions about how the new site would work, we wanted an unambiguous set of customer-focused criteria that would be our guiding principles throughout the project. We never wanted to lose sight of who we were redesigning the site for.

“PRWD impressed us with their research-led approach and the experience of their optimisation team. They were able to take a step back from our business and provide a layer of behavioural insight that completely shaped the way we approached the project.”

“The improvements to conversion rate we have seen since we launched the new website have been fantastic; better than we could have hoped for. Aside from the clear commercial benefits, the improvements to site performance reflect a better overall user experience, especially for visitors on mobile devices.”